James Lesh has recently posted three interesting articles on his blog “Heritage City”, which have also appeared in The Age and in The Conversation.
Book Review: Cities in a Sunburnt Country: Water and the Making of Urban Australia
This book review is published in the Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, Fall/automne 2023. Australia is the driest continent on Earth. Its regions fluctuate between punishing drought and intense rainfall. With their knowledge of Country, and their conservation cultures, First Peoples have had continual access to water for millennia. Water and weather shaped their everyday activities and cultural traditions. The British colonisation of Australia from 1788 onwards, and the development of its cities since the nineteenth century, has transformed how water is both understood and managed across the continent. The relationships between people, cities, and water, particularly the expanding provision Read more
We must protect Melbourne’s 20th-century heritage – here’s how to do it right
This article was originally published in The Age on 2 July 2023. The City of Maribyrnong has abandoned its local heritage protections for interwar and postwar housing in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The decision was heralded as a win for housing supply and affordability. But there is another side to the argument – will we look back in 50 years time and rue this decision that may well allow the destruction of this unique era of our history, architecture and social fabric? It’s something we need to consider as we move forward. The multi-year conservation project failed not due to a lack of Read more
YIMBYs and NIMBYs unite! You can have both heritage protection and more housing
Heritage conservation has been blamed for making the housing crisis worse by standing in the way of new, higher-density housing. But protecting heritage and increasing housing should be complementary objectives. Read more